The emotional turmoil of loss requires more than just time; it demands the intentional “work” of navigating grief. Certified grief educator and certified life coach Brian D. Smith, host of the Grief 2 Growth podcast, joins the conversation to share how he transformed his own pain after the sudden loss of his daughter, Shayna, into a calling to help others. Brian details his practical GEMS method—Gratitude, Exercise, Mindfulness, and Self-care—as a foundational daily practice for healing and discusses why the expectation of happiness during the holidays can be so difficult, the power of forgiveness to release emotional ties, and how to offer genuine support to those who are grieving without unintentionally minimizing their experience.

I am sharing my experience of loving the same man for 32 years, a mother to two adult children, a retired military officer, a breast cancer survivor, and my connections with others. 

Anyone experiencing suicidal thoughts should reach out to a suicide hotline or local emergency number in their country: Psychology Today Suicide Hotlines and Prevention Resources Around the World.

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Watch the episode here

Listen to the podcast here

The Grief 2 Growth Journey: Finding Meaning After The Unimaginable With Brian D. Smith

Voices Of Widowhood Healing Through The Holiday

Welcome to the special series of Voices of Widowhood: Healing Through the Holidays, a space where we share honest and healing conversations about love, loss, and the unique challenges the holiday seasons bring. I’m honored to welcome our very first guest in this series, Brian Smith. Brian is going to share with you some interesting ideas about GEMS, moving forward versus moving on, and things to say and not to say to people who are grieving. For those who are holding space for others who are grieving, he has special tips for you on how to support someone who is grieving during the holidays. Let’s get into this conversation now.

Hello, Brian, welcome to the Widowhood.

Thank you. It’s good to be here.

When you hear, “Welcome to the Widowhood,” what ticker tape runs across your mind when you hear a statement like that?

It’s weird. In my work, I’ve been running across a lot of widows lately, a lot of people who have lost their spouses. It’s men and women, but mostly women. It’s different for me now than a few months ago. At the age that I am now, a lot of people are losing their spouses. It has become fairly common in my life.

Brian D. Smith’s Essential Grief Work: Navigating Loss & Shayna’s Story

Speaking of the work, before we dive into this rich and meaningful conversation, I would like to allow you to introduce yourself and to share the work that you do, how you serve those navigating in grief, and why your work is such an essential part of this conversation. Brian, thank you so much for joining me in taking these moments to share with our readers who you are and the heartfelt meaning behind your work.

Thank you. What I do is I try to help people navigate loss in life, particularly the loss of a person. My story is that my daughter Shayna passed away suddenly at age fifteen. It was June 24, 2015. My personal experience with loss made me dive deep, do this work for myself, and find things that worked for me. I thought after a few years of doing that, after probably four or five years into my journey, maybe I could help somebody else.

There were people who inspired me early in my journey and helped me get to where I finally got. I wanted to be able to help people get there. I work a lot with parents who have lost children. I’m part of an organization called Helping Parents Heal. I’m on the board with Helping Parents Heal. We’ve been doing that and working with parents for about nine years or so. I became a certified grief educator and certified life coach several years ago.

My work is expanding now, working with people who have lost spouses, parents, and pets. Grief is not just a matter of losing a person. They could be losing a job. It could be getting a divorce. There are lots of different things that can trigger grief events. What I try to do is help people. What do I do? How do I navigate this? You feel like your life is over. How do I continue my life? How do I honor my loved one? How do I honor the pain that I’m going through, but also maybe transform this in a certain way? What I try to do is help people get to that point.

The Effort Of Healing & “Grief 2 Growth” Podcast

Thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing about Shayna. We may share our story every day. It may sound like rote to people. I believe there’s still a little bit of a price to pay when we share about them. We may have learned how to manage that grief. It’s not just a carefree conversation that our emotions and who we are are not connected to. What would you say to that statement?

Yes, absolutely true. It’s interesting because I do a lot of podcasts. I have my own podcast, but I also do a lot of speaking events and stuff. People might think, “Ten years. He’s over it. He has moved on. He’s passed it.” That’s not true. I believe that the grief always stays with us. It might change in form. It might affect us differently, but I will always miss my daughter. It’s still the tenth anniversary that came up. Those anniversaries, birthdays, etc., still hit hard. I appreciate you saying that this is not something like it’s over, it’s past, and we move on. I don’t think we ever do that. I know that I won’t. As long as I love my daughter, which I always will, and as long as I’m in this body, I will miss her. That’s part of the grief.

Thank you for sharing that. When you talk about trying to help people or trying to help them transform, you’re pretty successful at it. Would you talk about people you have helped and how you’ve seen their lives transform through the years?

I say try because no one can do the work for you. We talked earlier before we started recording. This is work. I don’t believe in the saying that time heals all wounds. Time gives us the opportunity to heal our wounds, but we have to do the work. We have to turn within. I have a technique that I work with people on. The people who have been attracted to me have been people who have done the work. I’ve had a very high success rate. I’ve only had one person that I can think of that I turned away because I knew she wasn’t ready to do the work. I can’t do the work for someone.

It’s not an instantaneous thing. I am smiling because there’s a woman whom I met once. We had a meeting. We would talk a week or so later. She goes, “I’m feeling somewhat better.” I was like, “Good.” She goes, “I’m not 100% better.” I said, “I wouldn’t expect you to be after one meeting. If I could do that, I could charge a lot more money. I’d be a very wealthy person.” It’s not a matter of you do these three things, you do these four things, and it’s over. It’s more like walking alongside someone. A grief guide is what I call myself.

I was talking with a guy. He gave me this image. He goes, “You’re like a navigator.” People come to me, and they tell me where they want to go. I’m like the GPS system. It’s like, “Here are some ways that we can get there. Here are some things that we can do.” Again, the person I’m working with, you’ve got to be ready. You’ve got to have the right mindset. You’ve got to go do the work. If you went to a trainer, and you didn’t go to the gym to workout, you just went to the trainer, you’re not going to get any gain. It’s similar to that.

I want to circle back to something about your podcast. Tell us about the name of your podcast, what it discusses, and where we can find it.

My podcast is called Grief 2 Growth. Everything in my branding is grief. It’s on all the podcast platforms. It’s pretty far-ranging. I have a lot of people who are what I call overcomers, people who have gone through difficult times, whether it be medical issues, losing a person, or multiple different things. Those are people who can inspire us to know that we can move forward. I had said to you the word spiritual approach because people then think religion, or they think woo-woo. My approach is neither one of those things.

I’m a very pragmatic person. I’m an engineer by training. I don’t ask anybody to believe anything. I give people evidence for the conclusions that I’ve come to. I do have people on that talk about things like quantum physics, mediumship, afterlife communications, and near-death experiences. I have had a lot of near-death experiences. If we’re thinking about our loved ones and where they are, I want to know what she experienced. Where did she go? Where is she now? What better way to find out than by talking to people who have been there?

At this point, I’ve interviewed probably a couple of hundred people who have had near-death experiences. It’s things like that. There are mental health professionals and grief experts. I have people on. We have conversations like you and I are having now. Everybody has something to teach us. We can learn either through our own experience or through others’ experiences. I want to learn as much as I can through other people’s experiences. I love sitting down and having these conversations with people who have been through it.

One of the things that I talk to people a lot of times about is forgiveness. People will say, “Forgiveness, we don’t understand what it is. We say it’s hard. We want to hold on to it.” I’m like, “If I can interview someone who was sexually assaulted by their grandfather, and they forgave them, or someone whose father murdered their mother, and they forgave their father, if those people can do it, then I can forgive the things that have happened to me.” I like to talk to people like that as well.

What is the power of forgiveness that makes it so intriguing to you?

The thing about forgiveness is that a lot of people misunderstand it. They think forgiveness is excusing what the person did to them or accepting what the person did to them. Neither one of those things is necessarily true. I think it was Oprah Winfrey who said, “Forgiveness is giving up all hope for a better past.” It’s accepting the situation. It’s releasing yourself from that person. When you hold anger toward someone, you’re actually energetically tying yourself to that person. You’ve taken yourself captive. Holding anger is like drinking poison, expecting the other person to die.

Typically, our anger doesn’t impact the other person. They might be going on living their lives, but they’re living rent-free in our heads every day. Forgiveness is releasing ourselves from that situation. A lot of times, when I’m working with people, speaking of forgiveness, the number one person they need to forgive is themselves. A lot of times, we’ll hold anger. We’ll hold guilt over what we did or didn’t do for our loved one. That can prevent us from moving forward in our healing process. If you’ve got unresolved anger towards yourself or towards others, if you’ve got guilt, and if you have shame, those are three things that can hold us back from allowing this grief to do the work that we need to do with it.

Unlocking Healing: Forgiveness, Guilt, And The Mindset To Start The Work

I can see that. Most people may not have considered the value of forgiveness in their grief journey. They are hyper-focused on “This person is no longer here,” instead of some of the secondary impacts of their absence. You talk about doing the work. What does that mean? What would that look like when someone says, “What’s the work I have to do?” How do you know if someone is not ready to work with you?

I’ve been very fortunate that people who have been attracted to me so far have been people who are ready to do the work. I have a complimentary session where I bring them in, and we talk. It has to be mutually agreed on that I can help them. The person I’m thinking of that I couldn’t help wasn’t ready to listen. She wasn’t listening to anything I was saying. She was basically blurting her story out over and over again. There was a lot of anger at the person or in the medical situation.

She thought the person had passed by wrongful means in the hospital, accusing the doctors of murdering their loved one. She wanted to tell the story over and over again and was not willing or able to let go of any of that. That was the one person I could think of. I felt like I couldn’t help them. I’m not a medical doctor. I’m not a trained psychotherapist if someone has medical issues. I do work with people who are in therapy. I have clients who are in therapy. They’re also working with me. I will refer them to a therapist if they’ve got that type of thing.

It’s mostly a matter of being willing. It’s a matter of being willing to do the work to let go. It doesn’t mean you have to come in and say, “I’m going to let go of all the anger. I’m going to let go of all the guilt.” As I said, this is a process, but being willing to take that step and being willing to see that possibility. You can choose to take your grief and hold on to it, the anger, and the pain for the rest of your life. I’ve seen people who have made that choice. I can’t take that away from them.

The G.E.M.S. Method: Daily Practice For Mental And Emotional Fitness

For me, it’s hard to watch someone choose that because you know for certain, there are options. When you talk about work, does that intertwine the GEMS method as far as what that work would look like? If so, could you expound on that?

Four or five years into this, I realized there were certain things that I was doing that seemed to be helpful. I tried everything. I’m reading all these books and trying different things. I’m like, “I need to have a daily practice.” I wanted to make it simple for me and for other people. After a while, I realized I had this four-letter acronym, GEMS, that I recommend to people. The first one is gratitude. I remember when I first heard about it, I was like, “This is bogus. I don’t see how this is going to help. What do I have to be grateful for? What difference is that going to make in my life?” I’m not huge on we can manifest anything we want. Some people say we can use gratitude to manifest.

Having said that, we can set conditions. We can set intentions. It starts with gratitude. What I’ve realized, after studying this for a long time, is that we are wired to focus on what’s wrong. Our brains have evolved to find danger and to focus on what’s wrong so we can fix it. Our brains are evolved to keep us alive. That’s a great thing. They’re not necessarily evolved to make us happy. When we talk to people, a lot of times, “How are you doing?”The first thing we want to go to after we say fine is we move to all the things that are wrong. “My car won’t start, my house isn’t big enough, I’m working too hard,” or whatever it might be.

With gratitude, what if we started focusing on the things that are going right? For everybody, all the time, there’s something going right. If you think about right now, as I’m sitting here talking to you, I have food. I’m cool. It’s hot outside. In the winter, when I have heat, I’m grateful for that. The little things we take for granted a lot of times, the gratitude practice helps us to focus on them, which gives us more of a balanced perspective on life. The other thing is that our brains are neuroplastic. We can develop pathways in our brains. By thinking about things that are going right, we actually train our brains to focus on things that are going right, which changes our brain chemistry. Gratitude is an important foundation.

Exercise is the second thing. We are mind, body, and spirit. We have to move our bodies. Our bodies are designed to move. For me, it happens to come in the form of walking. I walk 6 miles first thing every morning. That’s my thing. You can walk. It can be dancing, gardening, or yoga. I had a woman I interviewed on my podcast. She got into powerlifting. People recommended all these different things. She said, “That doesn’t work for me. Walking, no. Yoga, I don’t like it,” but she loves powerlifting. That’s her thing. It’s that brain chemistry thing. Our bodies need it. Walking gets me outside. Connection to nature is good for our bodies. Sunshine is good for us. Exercise is the second thing.

Some mindfulness or meditation practice helps us to lock in the gratitude practice by being mindful. For me, what it looks like is twice a day, I will do a twenty-minute meditation. It doesn’t have to be that. People can do five-minute meditations. You can do 30-second meditations as you sit at your desk, or when you get ready to go into a meeting. It is a practice that helps you to be mindful, so that when your brain starts going down that path of everything is wrong, the first thing is catching it. “This thought is not serving me. This thought is not helpful. How do I switch to another thought?” That’s a muscle that we can develop through the mindfulness practice. That’s the third leg of it.

The fourth one incorporates them all, which is self-care. When we’re in grief, we are drained. It takes all of our energy. We have to practice self-care. We’ve got to set boundaries when it comes to other people. We’ve got to learn to say no, which is another aspect of setting boundaries for people pleasers. It is indulging yourself sometimes, giving yourself a little treat, taking time off, and doing things that you enjoy. Especially when we’re in grief, that’s important, but it’s actually important all the time. In our society, we talk about go, go, go, and everybody works themselves. We need to focus more on taking care of ourselves.

I view people as a rechargeable battery. If you’re a rechargeable battery, you have to be charged. If you keep draining it all the time and never charge it up, eventually, it’s not going to be any good to anybody. We’ve got to take care of ourselves. It’s those four things. I find ways to do that on a daily basis. As I said, I was going through those. I ask people to find the things that work for you. It doesn’t have to be what I do, but the things that work for you. If you start doing those on a daily basis, it’ll help you to keep yourself mentally fit.

Thank you for sharing that. Did you automatically know what the things for you were? Did you try something and then it didn’t work out, and you tried something else?

I came across these things by trial and error. Those are the things that actually work for me. I used to lift weights. I’ve done yoga. I still do a little bit of yoga sometimes. I started walking. I had a Fitbit. I wanted to get in 10,000 steps a day. I was like, “The only way I’m going to get that in is if I take a 6-mile walk in the morning,” which is for my body and my mind because I listen to a podcast. When I’m not doing that, I listen to music. I do it before I start my day. That’s what works for me.

When it comes to meditation, some people claim they can’t meditate. I’m like, “Everybody can practice mindfulness. We just need to find out what works for you.” Try different things. It could be using an app, sitting quietly, or a walking meditation. You could do it while you’re doing your walk. It is being mindful of your steps. For me, it was trial and error. I offer those things as suggestions for people, but it might be power lifting for you. That’s fine, too.

Thank you. You mentioned the discovery call or the initial. If someone is apprehensive about reaching out to you and having that discovery call because they’re afraid they’re going to break down and be embarrassed, what would you say to them?

It’s a great point, too. I have had people who will apologize for crying. I’m like, “I see your tears as good. I see tears as a release of emotions.” When we’re in grief, or all the time, it’s important to express our emotions. I tell people there are no bad emotions. There are emotions that we don’t want to hold on to necessarily, but they’re all here to teach us something. They all need to be expressed. I’ve had people on calls get angry. I’ve had people on calls start crying.

I’m like, “That’s fine. I’m actually happy to see your tears because that means you’re getting this out. That means we’re making a connection.” I hope that people aren’t embarrassed by that. I don’t see it as a bad thing at all. I certainly don’t see it as a sign of weakness. I see it as a sign of love. A lot of times, people are very tired. They’ve been putting on a mask around their friends, their families, their co-workers, etc.

I tell people, “This is a safe space. This is a space where you can say anything. Anything is fair game to say to me that you’re angry at the person who left you, at the doctor, or at yourself.” You’re wondering if you’re ever going to get back to normal or whatever. All those things are fine. Another thing that people sometimes fear about discovery calls is sales calls. They were thinking, “You’re going to try to get me on there and sell me.” That is the last thing I want to do with people.

I usually wait for people to ask me if they want to work with me, like, “How do I reach out to you?” If they don’t, then I’ll send them a follow-up, but I’ve never tried to sell people on working with me. I want people who want to work with me because that’s the only way that I’m going to be able to help them. That has never been an issue, at least for me. It’s funny because I worked with a business coach. One time, she’s like, “You need to do this, this, and this.” I’m like, “I’m not doing that.” It’s not about me trying to make a lot of money or bringing everybody. I’m not looking to have clients who don’t want to work with me.

Comparing Grief & Differences By Gender And Culture

Thank you. Earlier in the conversation, you mentioned grief being different things. Do you ever hear people trying to compare one grief to another or say this is worse than that? If so, how do you manage those types of conversations?

We all do that. It’s a natural thing. I’ll give you an example where I screwed up because I don’t do everything right all the time. I was on a podcast. I was being interviewed. I’ve lost a daughter. I said, “The worst grief you can have is to lose a child.” This woman actually stopped me. She said, “I’ve lost a child, and I’ve lost a spouse. My husband passed away. I can tell you, losing a child is definitely no worse than losing your spouse.” I was like, “That’s something I realized I know I should not have said. We’re all taught not to compare grief.”

It’s a natural human thing. My daughter passed away suddenly. I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. She went to bed, and she didn’t wake up the next day. Some people will say, “It would be better if I had time to say goodbye,” but I’ve talked to people who’ve lost their children to cancer. They’ve watched them suffer. They’ve watched them not being able to talk, not be able to control their bowels, and stuff like that. They’ve watched them slowly go through that process. There’s good and bad either way.

Everybody’s grief is different. I have one guy. He called me up for a discovery call. He said that he had lost his best friend. I talked to him for probably close to half an hour. We’re getting toward the end of the call. He then mentioned something about losing his cat. I was like, “He lost his best friend and his cat.” It turns out it was his cat that he was calling me about, because people get attached to their pets. I don’t ever minimize anybody’s loss, whether it’s a cat, a dog, or a miscarriage. I’ve talked to women who have had miscarriages. They feel as sad as someone who lost a child who was 25 or 30 years old. Your grief is your grief. The worst grief is whatever grief you’re going through.

Thank you. In the same concept of comparing, do you think men or women handle grief differently? If so, what are some ways that you see that?

I’ve thought about this a lot. I don’t think there are as many biological differences between men and women as people would have us believe that men handle grief differently, but there’s a very big difference in socialization. Men, in general, are not encouraged to express their emotions. A lot of times, men are not in touch with their emotions. I always joke that when you ask a man how he feels, a lot of men will say, “Hungry,” because you’re not thinking about emotions. You’re thinking about biology.

That’s a stereotype, but 85% to 90% of my clients are women. The few times I do get to talk to men, whether it’s on a podcast, as a client, or whatever, we’re not encouraged to share. We do typically handle things differently. A lot of times, we express anger better than we do other emotions. Men will sometimes go to work. They’ll become workaholics. We’re not taught very well. There are general differences. There are also cultural differences. I don’t get to work with a lot of African-American people. There are a number of reasons for that.

Therapy or talking to people is not encouraged. Sometimes, people are held back by their religion because their religion will tell them they can’t communicate with spirits, talk to mediums, or talk about near-death experiences, the devil, etc. Sometimes, that will hold people back. They’ll say, “I need to go to church. I need to read the Bible or talk to my pastor.” There are differences in the way that we handle things, both culturally and by gender.

From reading your bio, you have taken a well-informed approach to different faiths after your daughter passed, in trying to come to a sense of what’s taking place. Can you share some of that?

I was raised as a Pentecostal. My grandfather was a pastor of our church. I was raised in a very fundamentalist household. It’s a long story. This idea of heaven and hell and God sending people to eternal torment never sat right with me. Long before my daughter passed, I had an intense fear of death. I was a weird kid. I’m still a weird person. When I was a kid, they would say, “Jesus is the only way to heaven.” I’m like, “What if I were born in India? I’d be a Hindu. If I were a Hindu, then I would be going to hell.”

I start realizing, “There are a billion Hindus in India.” That didn’t make sense to me. I wanted to study Buddhism, Hinduism, Daoism, Judaism, and a little bit of Islam. I studied all these different faiths to see where they were right and where they’re wrong. It’s interesting to me that about 90% of what most of them teach overlaps. We fight over the things that are different. We say, “Because of the things that are different, you’re going to hell.”

I was raised to believe that Catholics weren’t saved because they didn’t say the prayer the right way. They weren’t baptized the right way. When I grew up, Catholics believed that all Protestants were going to hell because we didn’t take communion. I’m like, “What is the core truth?” I read a lot of C.S. Lewis. It was interesting because even though he was a devout Christian, he talked about this concept. He called it the Tao or the Dao, which is this universal truth that precedes all the religions. The religions are all pointing to the same truth, but they’re coming at it in a little bit different way.

Coping With Grief During The Holidays: Expectations And New Traditions

Thank you. The name of the series that you are my first guest on is Voices of Widowhood: Healing Through the Holidays. Do you think the holidays make grief any different or the same?

It does make grief different. There are a couple of reasons. One, I’m in the northern hemisphere. At Christmas, for example, the holidays come around the darkest time of the year. There’s actually a reason for that. Early on, people were like, “It’s dark. We need something to lighten things up. We need to look forward to the light.” The winter solstice is one of the darkest times of the year. That’s right around when we have Christmas. There’s a biological thing going on there because it’s a funky time of year. We were talking about the cold earlier. I live where it’s cold, so it’s cold, and it’s dark.

There’s also this expectation we have of holidays. It’s a time when everybody is supposed to be happy. Families are getting together. We tell ourselves a story. Everybody else is happy. Everybody else is with family. Everybody else is celebrating. I’m miserable, so it makes us even more miserable during that time. It’s a time when, normally, we would have been with our spouse, or we would have been with our child. It’s a time when families are gathering. We miss them even more during that time. That’s why we need to be even more intentional about how we handle our grief during that time.

We need to have a plan for how we’re going to handle our grief. We need to set proper expectations for what things are going to be like. I used to suffer from a sad seasonal affective disorder. I thought, “It is because I like the light. I like the summers and stuff.” Finally, I realized after many years, if I could set my expectations right, that I’m going to have lower energy in the winter, I’m probably going to sleep a little bit later, and I’m not going to get as much done, then the sad went away. I bought a sad light. I gave it to a friend. I was like, “I don’t need this anymore.” I decided this is the way things are this time of year. We have seasons outside. We also have seasons internally.

Thank you. What are some other practical ways that one can manage their grief during the holiday season?

One of the biggest ones is setting proper expectations, understanding that this is going to be difficult, having a plan, and maybe setting some new traditions. If you’ve lost a loved one, you might want to set a place at the table for them. During that time, some people like to do that. They have their favorite foods and do something that they would love to do. We do this for my daughter’s birthday and for her angel date. These are some of the things that we do. When my girls started getting older, my wife and I went from “Christmas is not the way it was when you’re a kid, it’s not as exciting,” to then it was exciting when we had little kids. I can get up and put the toys together for them.

When they got to be teenagers, they were sleeping in Christmas. They weren’t getting toys. I had nothing to play with. It got boring again. Christmas is different. It’s different seasons of your life. When the girls were actually older, we started going to a movie on Christmas afternoon, because they had no toys to play with or anything. We’re like, “Let’s go to a movie.” We do that sometimes on Christmas Day. Maybe switch it up a little bit. Accept that things change.

I talk to people. Even if you haven’t lost a child, for example, they might move. You might not see them during the holidays. Things are going to change. We have to be willing to change with them. Instead of excitement, the holidays might be a time now where you relax. We say it’s not going to be that wild, children running around and screaming, until maybe you have grandchildren. Some people get that. Because my brothers and I are so far apart, our children are. My parents would go with us because we had the first children, then they went to my other brother, now that he has young children. My parents shifted there. That’s where their focus is.

Supporting The Grieving: How To Hold A Safe Space And What Not To Say

Thank you. Most of our conversation has been speaking to people who are grieving. I want to shift it to people who are supporting people who are grieving. How can they hold a safe space for them and not minimize their pain?

That’s an important topic. The thing is, because of the spiritual work that I do, sometimes people tend to bypass, or what we call spiritual bypassing, which is, “Everything is going to be okay. I believe that God is in charge, or I believe in soul planning, so I plan this. Therefore, I shouldn’t be sad about it.” That’s not true. Part of the human journey is going through all of these emotions and experiencing all of these emotions. We never want to try to take anything away from someone.

We never want to say, “You shouldn’t be sad because whatever,” or “At least you had this time with them,” or any of the things we want to say because we want to take it away from somebody. We’re going to say those things. We’re going to try to encourage them sometimes, but be very gentle with that and allow people to go through their process. In the guilt I talked about earlier, I have a friend who went through this and started saying a lot of things about how guilty they’re feeling. I realized I can argue with them all I want. I can give them data as to why they shouldn’t feel that way, but you’re going to feel that way for a while.

In that early aspect of grief, it’s what I call the white knuckle phase. You try to hang on. If you’re getting out of bed, if you’re getting dressed, if you’re taking a shower, or if you’re eating, you’re doing the work. I was talking to someone. They said that they lost a son to suicide. They said, “I know I need to do something, but I don’t know what it is.” I said, “You’re doing it. You’re surviving a year out after losing a child to suicide. If you’re upright, you’re doing great.” It is helping people set that expectation that this is going to take a while.

It’s a general process. For people who are supporting people in grief, people in grief want to be witnessed. They want to be listened to. People are always looking for the right words. Don’t even worry about the right words. To say, “I’m here for you. I’m here to listen to what you have to say. I understand,” and stuff like that, that’s what people in grief want to hear. We want to talk about our loved one. People sometimes will avoid. “I don’t want to mention their spouse. I don’t want to mention their child because I’ll make them sad.” No, you’re not going to make it sad. We’re already thinking about it. It is being free with letting people express themselves. Sometimes, it’s just sitting and listening.

Thank you. I believe on your website, you have a list of what not to say and what to say. You have some different sections about giving people some guidance on that, if I recall correctly.

I’m not sure if it’s on my website. It’s definitely in my book. Yes, there are a few things. A couple of things are universal. Don’t say, “God needed another angel,” or “They’re in a better place.” Stuff like that doesn’t help and minimize their grief. “God needed another angel.” God needed this person more than I did? This is my spouse, whom I plan to spend the rest of my life with. You’re telling me that God needed them right now? We might think that’s helpful, but it’s not. It can cut people.

“You’re young. You’ll find somebody else. Someone can be replaced, whether it’s a child. You can have another child,” for example. We don’t replace people. That person who was in your life, whether it’s a child, a spouse, or whatever, there is a unique fit they have in your life that no one else is ever going to have. I’ve been talking to people who have gone through spouse loss, for example. They’re like, “I’m with someone else, but it’s not the same as the other person.” I don’t want them to be the same, by the way. They’re different, and that’s fine. Don’t try to minimize someone’s loss by saying, “You can find somebody else.”

Grief Is A Spiral: Why You Feel Stuck & Releasing Survivor’s Guilt

Thank you. Another thing that I hear people often, and I want to hear what you have to say about, “It has been two years, but I feel like I’m the same. I thought that after a certain amount of time would pass, this would be better.”

A couple of things. One, it takes time. There are no stages of grief. There’s no time for grief. Two years, I still consider to be early grief. People may not want to hear that, because I should be over it, but no. Two years is still pretty early. The second thing is that people are making more progress than they realize. People whom I talk to are so hard on themselves. “I should be here, or I should be there.” I’m working with a guy right now who’s a military project planner. “Give me the steps. I’m going to do the steps. Here are the five books I’m reading right now.” I’m like, “That’s great that you’re doing the work. If you’re growing a plant, you can’t keep dumping water and fertilizer on it and think it’s going to grow in two weeks, because I gave it enough water for a year. It doesn’t work that way.”

We have to be patient and understand this is a growth process. It’s a birthing process. It’s a plant. It’s a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. You think of all these analogies. Things don’t change overnight. The other thing about grief is that I look at it as a spiral. It feels like you’re going in a circle. Every time you come back to that place, you’re actually coming at it from a different level, a little bit higher and a little bit different perspective. It sometimes will feel like we’re circling around. People say, “I thought I was doing so much better. Their birthday came around again, and I’m right back where I was.”

I’m like, “No, you’re probably not right back where you were. You do know now you’ve had some moments of joy. When you were first in this place, you didn’t even know joy was possible. You are in a place where it’s a little bit different.” I was talking with a client. She was saying that she went to an event. She found herself dancing and laughing. She caught herself, like, “I’m not supposed to be doing this because of my husband. I’m supposed to be sad.” She went back to that sad place, but she had that glimpse of knowing that that was possible. That will come back again. You’re in a different place.

The idea that I should not be happy, where does that come from, do you think?

I published an article about that because I was there. When my daughter passed away, I thought, “One of the ways I can honor her is by being miserable for the rest of my life. I’m going to take an internal vow that I’m never going to be happy again. People will say that he was never the same.” A lot of people think, “If they’re not here to enjoy it, then I shouldn’t enjoy it either.” That survivor’s guilt, that idea that if I loved them, I could never be happy again, comes from guilt. It is the best way to put it.

It is a warped sense of what it means to honor someone. There’s also this subconscious fear that you equate the pain with the love for that person. We think, “I can’t let go of the pain because we’re letting go of the love. If I let go of the pain, I’m going to forget them.” We have to learn to separate those two things. We can let go of the pain. We don’t have to live with that intense level of pain to keep the love that we have for that person. That’s where it comes from.

I work with people on a basis called continuing bonds. In the early days of grief therapy or grief treatment, they would say, “Get over it. The person is gone. Accept it. Your attachment to them is unhealthy. It’s an addiction or obsession. Let it go. Accept reality. Move on.” Now, we say, “You can and should keep that relationship with that person. It’s okay to still love them. It’s okay to still talk to them. It’s okay to still include them as part of your life. That’s all okay.”

That’s helping people to be able to move forward. When I was in early grief, I remember people talking about moving on. I didn’t like the idea of moving on because it sounded like I was leaving my daughter in the past. I like the idea of moving forward with our loved one. For me, moving forward to where I’m going to see her again. I can move forward. I don’t want to move on now.

When I hear that, it is very hard. It’s interesting how some of those words have such a deep meaning now that before we had this profound loss, they never would have hit us the way that they do now when you hear that. You spoke briefly about your book. Can you share a little bit more about that?

I actually have two books. One is Grief 2 Growth: Planted, Not Buried. That’s the book I wrote early on, five years probably after Shayna passed. It’s about my grief experience, what to expect when you’re going through grief, what grief is, some of the things to say, some of the things not to say, and a few things that you can do to navigate grief and help others navigate their grief. My second book is GEMS. The GEMS we talked about, I wrote a short PDF that you can download for free.

I also wrote a book that outlines what the steps are and why it is that they work. It gives you some ideas as to how you can modify it for yourself to help people have a practice. People keep saying, “What should I do?” I’m like, “There are four steps. They are general, but these are some things that you should be doing anyway. Frankly, whether you’re in grief or not, you should be doing these things on a daily basis.” Those are the two books.

Grief Coach Vs. Therapist: Why You Might Need Both For Healing

Thank you. You also mentioned earlier that some people have psychotherapists and work with you. For the person who thinks, “Why would I need both? Why wouldn’t I need a psychotherapist? What are you going to do that my therapist will not?”

There’s a difference between a grief coach or a life coach, and a therapist. If you have a mental health disease, diagnosis, psychosis, or neuroses, you should be seeing a mental health professional. Grief is not a disorder. It’s not a disease. It’s not something to be cured. It’s something that we have to navigate and can actually use to transform us. My daughter is a mental health professional. She’s a licensed therapist. They’re taught, for example, not to self-disclose. They won’t talk about what’s going on in their lives personally.

They’re taught not to give advice. I don’t want to put down the mental health profession, but those are some of the limitations that they have that I don’t have. I will work with people and say, “We might want to think about doing this this way, or you might want to do this.” Another thing that people like about talking to me is that they know that I know what they’re feeling. I’ve been through what they’re going through. People like to hear that. They want to have their grief witnessed. It’s interesting right now. We’ve got AI coming up. People are saying, “You can go to ChatGPT. ChatGPT could be like a therapist.”

It can mimic what people do, but what it doesn’t do is feel. What it doesn’t do is look you in the eye and say, “I’ve had that experience that you’ve had.” People want that human connection. Typically, when people who are seeing therapists come to me, it’s because they’ve been seeing a therapist and they haven’t had the grief witnessed the way that I can do it. When I took my grief certification program, it was interesting. There were a lot of nurses, doctors, and therapists in there because they don’t get taught that when they’re going through their program.

Is the picture behind you your daughter, Shayna?

Yes, that’s Shayna.

Thank you. How was she in this picture?

That was six weeks before she passed. It was wild because Shayna was her own person. She wanted to get her hair cut. Shayna had this long, beautiful hair. For African-Americans, our hair typically doesn’t grow fast. For women to get long hair, sometimes it is a little bit of a struggle, but Shayna was fifteen. Her hair had never been cut. She told her mother, “I want to get my hair cut.” She and her mother agreed on this hairstyle. Shayna goes to get her haircut, pulls out that other picture, and says, “This is what I want.” She came home. That’s what she had. This was six weeks before she passed. We only have a few pictures with her hair like that.

Navigating Loss Within the Same Household & Honoring Different Grief

She is beautiful. When people have the same loss for a person in the household, what are some ways that are probably more of a learned experience on how to deal with that? As you said, we each have a different relationship with that person. When you’re in the same house, that seems to complicate the grief a little bit than when people live in different places.

Everybody has a different relationship with every person around them. I see Shayna one way. Her mother sees her another way. Her sister sees her another way. Her grandmother sees her another way. Her friends at school see her another way. Everybody has lost the same person, but they’ve lost a different person because it’s like a fractal of a diamond. We see that one part of them. In my case, my Kayla was out of the house when Shayna passed because Kayla had finished her first year of college. My wife and I were here.

We had different views on death. We had different views on what this meant and stuff like that. I was very fortunate in that we came together. She started reading the same things that I was reading and listening to the same podcasts I listened to. It brought us closer together, to be frank. Kayla told me she was an atheist, a materialist, a couple of years earlier. She was only fifteen or so when she said it. She was eighteen when Shayna passed. I was concerned about how she’s going to handle this if she thinks that Shayna is like God.

She doesn’t like me to share a lot about what her thing is. She has changed since the time she went to the Helping Parents Heal Conference with us a couple of years ago and volunteered there. The thing is, we all have to honor the fact that people grieve differently. Some people are not going to want to mention that person who passed. It doesn’t mean they don’t love them. It means that, right then, it hurts too much. Some people want to put the pictures away. I was working with a woman. Her husband and her other son didn’t like to mention their son who had passed. They wanted to put all the pictures away, but she wanted the opposite.

I said, “We’re going to have to find a way to work together. Maybe we can say on Saturday morning at 9:00, we’ll meet. We’ll pull out the pictures, then we’ll talk about them.” She could have her needs met, but they could also have their needs met. With Shayna, we had her body cremated. We were thinking about getting an urn or a piece of art or something. Kayla goes, “No, that’s creepy. I don’t want that in the house.” We’re like, “Fine. We won’t put that in the house.” That was a compromise that we made with Kayla.

There is a lot of honoring other people’s feelings in this process to find that medium.

Understanding people who grieve differently, we talked about men and women earlier. I cried every day for a couple of years, probably. Mostly, it was in the shower. Mostly, it was when other people weren’t around. Somebody might look at me and say, “He doesn’t seem to be as upset.” My wife might have thought, “He’s not very upset,” because I don’t cry much in front of other people. It doesn’t mean that we don’t care. When you’re looking at your spouse, and they’re like, “I don’t want to say their name,” it doesn’t mean that they don’t love them. It means that it hurts them too much to say their name. We have to honor that and find a way to navigate that together.

Brian, thank you so much for having this conversation and being part of this journey to help people during the holidays. I have asked you a lot of questions. I try to give my guests an opportunity to see if they have any questions for me. You being on a podcast, that may be a little bit too easy, but I will ask if you have any questions for me.

Learning To Grieve Forever And Honoring The Love

I hadn’t thought about asking you a question. In grief, we think of all the sadness, all the anger, the guilt, and all the other emotions. If anything, what has surprised you in terms of your grief that came out of it that you weren’t expecting?

I could not military project manage my way out of this quickly. In fact, I wrote a note some time ago, and I found it, telling myself, “I thought I could get over this quicker.” I realized there’s never going to be, “I got over this.” I was with my husband for 32 years. I love him still today. As you said, people feel like when they have an emotional moment, they’re back to where they were. I know I’m not back to where I was.

I know that it still impacts me. My husband’s deathversary and his birthday, hot mess. I’ve learned that I’m going to take off work. I’m not going to have anything on my plate. I’m going to let my emotions be what they are. For Mark’s birthday, I lived near the beach. I went to the beach and watched the sun come up. I did a live on one of my social media platforms, shared with people memories of Mark, and let it be. That was okay.

Our son, who lives nearby, and I went and hung out. We did some Jeep photo things and stuff like that, with some murals. I have remarried. My current husband honors how I feel about my late husband. There’s never a competition, but realizing I will grieve Mark some form of passion for the rest of my life. I wasn’t prepared for that because this was the first close person to me to leave this world. My parents were still alive when my husband passed.

Not that I was trying to wish them ill, but I was like, “How?” That’s not the order in your head that you think. Our children will have moments in their lives where their dad will not be here. It’s even more profound. It’s the long game that I will grieve him forever. It doesn’t look like it did that first year. It doesn’t look like it did the second year. It does evolve. I now no longer have this false expectation that I’m over this, that I’ve learned to keep living, and this will not impact me.

That’s awesome. I love what you said, the way you honor him on those dates. It’s important to have those rituals and establish that. I love the fact that your husband now honors the fact that you still have love for your husband. It’s amazing to me. There are people who are like this. You don’t have to make a choice like, “Do I still love this person? Can I also move forward with someone else?” I’ve seen people navigate that well. Thanks for sharing that.

You’re welcome. Thank you. I would like you to close out this conversation to the people that have joined us, and specifically, knowing that this is the first conversation for my series, and this is for people during the holidays.

Be gentle with yourself. Set reasonable expectations. Try to find a ritual that works for you to honor your loved one, to bring them in, to make them part of your day, of your holidays, or whatever, in whatever way that looks like for you.

Thank you.

Important Links

• Brian Smith
• Grief 2 Growth
• Helping Parents Heal
• Grief 2 Growth Podcast
• Grief 2 Growth: Planted, Not Buried
• GEMS

About Brian D. Smith

Achology Certified Life Coaching

• Reiki I Certification
• Reiki II Certification
• Positive Intelligence Coach Trained

Services Offered

Brian is a Grief Guide, Life Purpose Coach, and Mental Fitness Trainer. His client work consists of one-to-one customized sessions, meeting you where you are. In addition, Brian often teaches classes.

Brian knows everyone’s grief is unique. He meets you where you are and tailors the work to what you need when you need it. Brian offers a complimentary thirty-minute consultation so that you and he can assess whether you are a good fit for each other before you commit to working with him.

In addition to helping with the loss of a person in your life, Brian helps with other types of grief events, including the loss of a job, pet loss, divorce, illness, etc. Brian’s approach is based on over 60 years of experience in life, including all of these events and the passing of his 15-year-old daughter, Shayna Elayna Smith, at the age of 15, in 2015. Brian has worked with hundreds of parents through the Helping Parents Heal organization. He started his grief guidance and life coaching business in 2019 so he could reach more people.

Brian provides a safe space where you can safely share what you are experiencing. Brian shares techniques he discovered and developed after his devastating loss. Perhaps most importantly, he can help you understand that death is not goodbye and that your relationship with your loved one can continue. Any ending is a new beginning. Brian’s understanding is not a religious-based belief but a position based on reason and evidence. Brian doesn’t ask you to take his word for anything. He shares what he has discovered and allows you to draw your own conclusions.

Brian is on the board of Helping Parents, a non-profit peer-to-peer support group for parents of children who have passed. He is a sought-after podcast guest and public speaker having spoken at IANDS conferences, Helping Parents Heal, The Death Grief & Belief Conference, and more. He is the author of Grief 2 Growth and the host of the Grief 2 Growth podcast.

https://www.grief2growth.com/